`Mental Health Day` A Workplace Malady

She was standing in front of a store window in the mall, her eyes dissecting the display with a surgeon`s skill.

It was 11 a.m. on a weekday, and I knew she should have been at work.

She wasn`t, she explained when I stopped to say hello, because she`d called in sick that day.

``I`m not really sick,`` she confided as her eyes checked style against price. ``I`m just taking a `mental health day.` Sometimes you need one, you know?``

She went back to browsing. I went along to do an interview. When I left an hour later, she was still in the mall; still pricing items in store windows.

ROOTS OF ABSENTEEISM

Absenteeism has become a major factor in corporate life.

Contending with it presents managers with a very real challenge because many Americans believe they have a perfect right to take a day off whenever they feel they need or want one.

It`s a problem that`s not limited to secretaries, bank tellers and assembly- line workers. Vice presidents also take off; so do accountants, lawyers and creative directors. And it`s not something that can be ignored; it`s too costly.

The federal government, in fact, estimates that absent workers cost U.S. business $30 billion last year in lost productivity.

But to cope with the problem, and economic loss, of absenteeism, you must first understand it.

That means you have to trace it back to its roots.

For many Americans, those roots stretch back to their school days. (Ever count the number of kids you see wandering around in the mall during the week at times when they`re supposed to be in the classroom?)

Once you do that, you must then determine why your employees aren`t coming to work.

Some of them, certainly, only miss a day when they`re ill. But, writing in this month`s Psychology Today, management consultant and author Gary Johns says very few workers actually take a day off because they`re ill.

``If sickness were the real cause in most cases, we would expect absenteeism to decrease as medical care improves,`` Johns writes. Instead, study after study has found that instead of decreasing, absences ascribed to illness have actually increased.

(There has been, however, a marked change in the kinds of illnesses that are being reported. Respiratory and stomach ailments are down, whereas, for example, lower back pains and psychological disorders increased. Johns says that fact suggests that workers who often call in sick explain their absences in terms of medical conditions that are currently popular in the belief that they are more acceptable excuses.)

WHAT`S A MANAGER TO DO?

But if sickness isn`t the cause, why are people not coming to work?

There are a host of reasons ranging from boredom with jobs they aren`t suited for to unhappiness with supervisors and co-workers, say psychologists.

In one recent study, psychologist Stuart Youngblood of Texas A&M found, for example, that workers who place a high value on their time off are usually absent more than those who did not.

As a manager, then, you must review the absentee records of individual employees and find out what, in particular, is troubling them. If you do, you may find you can cut down your absentee rates by simply shifting a few people into jobs they`re more suited for. You might also find it appropriate to institute concepts such as flextime.

I think you`ll be pleasantly surprised at the increase in productivity and morale when you do.